About me!

As a girl, I dreamed of being swept off my feet by my one true love. And at the age of 24, it finally happened…and he’s never let me forget it. A mild-mannered secretary by day and a determined word-wrangler by night, I battle the twin evils of distraction and procrastination in order to write fantastical tales of wuv…twue wuv…with a few bad haiku thrown in for good measure.

I reside in the midst of an Iowa corn field with my hopelessly devoted husband and his mighty red pen; four crazy, cute kids; and an assortment of adorable kitties, chicks, and bunnies.

I’ve been spinning yarns for more years than I care to admit and I’ve got the calluses and paper cuts to prove it. My first novel, The Lokana Chronicles, is currently undergoing a major rewrite in advance of another round of queries. It’s anybody’s guess what will happen with it, but I hope someone will find it worthy and agree to publish it. In the meantime, I’ll keep working on the sequels.

Scattered among the pages here you’ll find a few short stories, some haiku, and a few random thoughts on writing and other things. If you like what you see, I hope you’ll take the time to let me know. As they say, comments are love! 🙂

Just wanted to let you know that I am enjoying your blog! So I nominated you for The Versatile Blogger award. Stop by my sight to find out the steps to accepting it, if you choose to!http://cherylfassett.wordpress.com

Thanks, Cheryl! I’m so glad you’re enjoying it here. And thank you for the nomination! (Congrats, too, by the way!) I’ve already been nominated a couple of times for the Versatile Blogger Award, so I think I’ll sit this one out, but thanks for thinking of me. If you’re interested, you can read my answers here.

I’ve been nominated for the ‘Liebster Award’ and wish to nominate your blog as one of my eleven nominees. Why? Because I find your words fascinating day-after-day. If this string of people nominating awards gets at least one more person to your blog I’ll consider it a success–By the way–Best name for a blog in the history of blogs!

Right you are! I’m descended from a family of shutterbugs, so I have a ridiculous amount of pictures, film and digital. If my house ever burned down, my pictures are the things I would truly mourn. Things are just things, even though they might have strong memories attached to them. But pictures capture moments in time and preserve memories better than any thing ever could.

Well, except for a pencil and paper, perhaps (or whatever other writing instrument you like). 🙂

I guess that’s one reason so many people are busy scanning every picture they can and putting them onto DVDs and safe storage online and elsewhere. They might not be the originals, but at least the images would survive a catastrophe.

I did the same thing with some of mine – I scanned a dozen or so of them and had three on the scanner at once. It definitely makes the work go a little quicker.

I’ll check out your link! It’s been a crazy couple of weeks here with vacations and other things that we’re still trying to recover from (I just woke of from a lovely and much-needed four-hour nap). It might take me a bit, but I’ll try to get to it tonight! 🙂

It would have been better if we hadn’t had to take my father-in-law to the hospital (he tore some muscles between his ribs playing with the kids). And we decided that three days camping is about all the family togetherness we can take (my in-laws always come with us, and we were gone for five days this time, our longest trip yet).

And I didn’t really get to escape the daily grind, because I started a new (temporary) job the week before we left for our trip, so we changed our reservation to the state park near where I work so that I could go to work during the day. It made for a very different vacation – everyone else was getting cabin fever, and I felt like the trip had ended because I was back at work. I’ve never done the whole working vacation thing before. I’m not sure I like it.

That said, if a working vacation involved me and my story and some peace and quiet, I think I could totally handle that. 😉

Sorry to hear that things weren’t exactly a resounding success 😦 I’m long past able to go camping now, unfortunately, but when I was able – no way would I want ‘Parental Units’ around LOL. I like caravans now – at least I can actually have a chance of not suffering from seizing up!

No way would I even consider a working vacation! :O Okay, so I might jot down a few things for a story, especially inspiration that I could only get from the vacation location(s), but I try not to let my writing obsession rear its head when it’s just me and my wife 😉 The closest I get is reading, usually 😀

We definitely don’t rough it when it comes to camping – our camper has air conditioning, which I couldn’t do without, especially last week. We take a TV along with us for rainy days, but we’ve only used it a couple times. Usually we have a techno-ban in effect on vacatiin, but the last couple of trips it sort if failed.

We’re taking another stab at camping on Thursday. Hopefully this time will go better! 🙂

Camping here can refer to either tents or campers, though generally it means tents and campers are considered cheating. 🙂 I don’t mind that, though – I don’t like roughing it that much, and we still have minimal facilities since we usually use what’s available at the campground so we don’t have to dump our tanks as often.

The last time I camped in a tent, we ended up sleeping in a rut because we had set the tent up in the dark. I decided then that that was enough for me. 🙂

LOL. I suspect that our daughter, whose last camping weekend proved that her tent wasn’t waterproof, might view a camper as cheating too 😀 And fancy forgetting the one golden rule of camping – never pitch tent in the dark LOL!

We were camping at a relative’s house – they were having an anniversary party for their 25th and they live three hours away. We intended to set it up in the daylight, but you know how it is at family get-togethers: you get talking and maybe have a drink or two, and pretty soon it’s 11:30 p.m. and you’re trying to save your cousin from butchering a classic country song on the karaoke machine. 😀

Anyway, once we did a little repositioning with our sleeping bags, the rut ended up providing some great lumbar support, but it was a chilly night and I woke up stiff and sore the next morning after only a few hours’ sleep. We had to leave early to make it back for another family get-together on my side, and we were all pretty tired. I’ll say this, though – my husband’s family sure knows how to throw a party! 😀

Well, apart from the morning discomfort it sounds like something of a success 😉 I can’t say I’ve ever been involved in such an affair. But then I’m also not good with large groups of people (I tend to be found hiding in some quiet, dark corner LOL). Funny really, as our kids (all adults now) have a reputation for knowing how to party well 🙂

I’m not usually much for big groups of people, either, but my father-in-law had twelve brothers and sisters, so family reunions are always huge. One cousin got married last month and her husband also has a large family, so they were trying to figure out just who to invite because a small family wedding for them was still going to consist of about 300 people, I think she told me. It was kinda crazy, but a lot of fun. 🙂

Aww, thank you! I’m glad you like my book posts; now I just need to make time to update them! Actually, that shouldn’t take too long – the amount of reading I’ve done this summer is positively shameful. Too bad blogs and Twitter don’ count as books… 🙂

Thank you so much! I’m glad you’re enjoying my ramblings. I try to post once every day or two, but sometimes life (and kids) gets in the way. You can always subscribe, too – then you’ll be sure to see anything new I post. 😉

Yeah, migraines and allergies really suck. Do you know your triggers? I’m allergic to dust and pollen, but my migraines are hormone-related (and menopause made them worse). Oh, hormones. Doesn’t being a girl just rock? 😛

I realise you have the award, but I wanted to nominate you as one of the bloggers who inspires me to continue this journey. I appreciate all your support, and the contributions you make to the community as a whole.

Once you have enough text in a file to consider it to be a book or manuscript, hundreds of publishers are out there trying to sell your work. If you want to publish your text as an independent author, go here.

Hi Kay, found my way here via Jenny’s blog at http://readsbyredriverbanks.wordpress.com/. Have been enjoying looking around and reading your work. Love the title of your blog. As an ex-teacher, I can’t tell you how often I corrected stories that ended with just those words — usually when the writer arrived at the stipulated word count:)

Incidentally, my blog title came from a story I wrote with a friend once in high school. We were writing it for fun, so I’m not sure how she arrived at this particular ending, but it still makes me laugh, even today. Glad you like it, too! 🙂

Hey there Kay! I’m doing a project where I’m following ten exciting, fresh, and interesting bloggers each day for the month of March 2015, and you’re today’s #4! Feel free to come visit me when you can at http://www.thatssojacob.wordpress.com, and follow if you like what you read. Have a good one!

Hey! This is, hopefully, the most automated comment you will ever-ever receive from me. I’ve popped over to say I finally put together the blogroll for NanoPoblano, I wanted you to check it out, and make sure that (1) you still want to participate and (2) your blog name is written as you want it written, and (3) I didn’t leave out super important information. Then, leave a comment introducing yourself. This is the page I’ll be directing people to through the month, so I’m hoping they’ll see your comment and be excited to go check you out. It should say something like, “Hey, Cheer Peppers– I’m So&So. I write about such&such. Come by and say hey.” I’ll be pruning comments on that page so it’s just link backs from posts, positive Pepper messages, and your intro. I’ll be sharing the page tomorrow night, all over town, so if you can put something up before then, that’d be awesome. If not, no worries, we have a whole month to go. https://rarasaur.wordpress.com/nanopoblano-2015/ ❤

The name of your blog pulled me in. I am an English Major graduated from our local university and extremely struggling freelance. I have published 3 things so far. I enjoy the photography side of it also. I’ll have to check you out. Maybe you can check mine as well!
😊

Thank you! I admit, there’s been lots more photography than writing here of late, but now that I’m making some progress on some of my WIPs, I’m hoping that will change things for the blog, too. You know, get the creative juices flowing again. It sure can’t hurt…

Found a way here through someone’s blog.It is worth visiting your blog.The theme and feel of your blog is super cool.That pink color👌
I’m a beginner and need your support so do visit my blog and give my posts a read. Thanks in advancehttps://jannat007.wordpress.com